Managing while black?

Posted by Marc Hodak on November 5, 2007 under Unintended consequences | 2 Comments to Read

Black representation among major company CEOs has taken quite a hit in the last week with the departure of Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch and the announced departure of Dick Parsons at Time Warner. It’s not as if blacks aren’t already “underrepresented” among major company CEOs. An obvious reason is the legacy of discrimination. But stories about black underrepresentation seem to invariably go the next, unhelpful step.

“When African-Americans enter the corporate arena, they enter with a trust deficit,” said Jessica Faye Carter, author of “Double Outsiders: How Women of Color can Succeed in Corporate America.”

“There’s a perception they have to overcome, even if they have a law degree from Harvard or an MBA from Harvard,” she said. “The indicia of power in corporate America is still white and male.”

This seems to me a nice way of saying racism. But racism, although it certainly exists in corporate America (as everywhere else), is a weak explanation for black underrepresentation in business, especially big businesses, which bend over backward to achieve diversity.

I think a more likely source for a “trust deficit” is the perception, right or wrong, that blacks coming out of Yale aren’t as qualified as whites coming out of Yale because they weren’t as qualified going in.

The null hypothesis is that blacks will continue to grow in the ranks of business, all the way up to the top. Nothing will stop that. But nothing will slow it down like the institutionalized perception that blacks “need the help” of lower standards at certain points along the way. Not even racism. And there is only one way to eliminate that perception–stop official discrimination on the basis of color.